Listen to the flip side

"'Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero,'"
Probably says it all -apart from all the details that go to make that conclusion. However, in a digital and wired world, we need to learn the lessons about how decisions, spending and networking actually do operate. Here we see a batle between conventional 'wisdom' and the possible facts. The conventional wisdom is based on seemingly soundly based logic operating from premises that are well accepted and tend, indeed, to lie close to the basis on which we do ecomomics. However, the constant fall-down fro economics is that actual behaviour often is influenced by more than we initially think. In this case it could be that file sharing allows people to test out before buying and indeed to expand their repertoire of listening without having to risk their money, but at the end of the day there is something about owning hard copy with all the extras that can bring ... ?

"Our hypothesis was that if downloads are killing music, then albums that are downloaded more intensively should sell less," says Strumpf. But, after adjusting for the effects of popularity, they discovered that file sharing has "no statistically significant effect" on sales. ... File sharing is done primarily by teenagers and college kids because they have a lot of time on their hands but they don't have a lot of money. If we got rid of file sharing tomorrow, it doesn't necessarily mean these kids would be buying any more music"